


I Knew Him

by Brosedshield



Series: MCU Character Studies [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, captain america: the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: Amnesia, Brainwashing, Character Study, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Gen, Memories, Memory Loss, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:16:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can’t erase care. You can’t forget the choice to serve beyond yourself, to give up a life for something that matters more. The choice to protect, simply made in childhood, is what saves Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Knew Him

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thought based on the movie. Hope you enjoy! No beta here, so the cranberries, they may be ERROR: ERROR MESSAGE. Concrit is welcome!

The choice to save another person always changes you. For most of us, it’s not easy to step between danger and a stranger or a friend, not easy to open one’s own vulnerabilities like that to the world.

Of course, it comes naturally for some. Steve Rogers, even when he was an asthmatic shrimp, barely hesitated to step between a threat and someone who needed his help. Sometimes even if those people _were_ the threat. For him, the reverse was more of a challenge, the choice to harm. No matter how good the cause, no matter how great a defense it was for his country, it will take him a long time to forget the first Hydra soldiers who lives he chose to end. It’s a testament to his heart that it hurts him most that he _will_ forget, rather than that the dull cracking of their bones still haunts his dreams.

For the rest of us, the choice to help beyond ourselves is not that easy. After all, that’s not a choice you can ever take back. You can’t, having _saved_ someone, be fine with letting them fall. Being a protector is something that settles in your bones like the ache of a good workout, the chill of winter ice that’s hard to shake even during the most gracious springtime. That choice, simply made in childhood, is what saved Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier.

James Buchanan Barnes was a wild child, middle in a large family, and reckless as any boy without either positive attention or purpose of being. He was on a fairly clear track to jazz clubs and jail time before he met Steve Rogers.

‘Met’ is a strong word. The Barnes’ and the Rogers’ had lived in the same neighborhood for all of Bucky’s life, and he’d always known skinny Stevie, but not thought much about him. He was the boy who got beat-up a lot. He was the kind of kid who would defend against any threat kittens, frogs, littler kids (not many of those), and bigger kids with less will to fight back.

On the day that changed his life, Buck was about six and nursing the marks of a fresh beating from mouthing off to his oldest brother. He was nursing a sprained wrist and some bruised pride, half-leaning against the alley wall to avoid more damage to his bruised backside, when the little Rogers shrimp crept up to him.

Even at six years old, Bucky had been impressed right then (almost to the point of jealously) by the kid’s guts. Bucky wasn’t a guy who spent his time beating on other kids, none of the Barnes’ boys did (mouthy siblings being an exception to that rule), but that didn’t mean anyone had gone out of their way to be friendly to Rogers.

“Waddaya want?” Bucky snapped.

Rather than being put off by the tone, Stevie seemed emboldened by the acknowledgement. He moved closer. “Kin I help you?”

Buck almost took a swat at him, but it would have hurt too much to move. “Waddaya think you can do for me, shrimp?”

Stevie didn’t retreat. “Donno. But ya looked sad ‘n its not fun to be sad.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, shrimp,” Bucky snapped. 

For the first time, Stevie’s eyes snapped. “M’name’s Steven Grant Rogers, not _shrimp_ , ‘n you don’t got to be mean when I just wanted to see if you were okay.” Any other kid would have walked away, that being the better part of valor, but Steven Grant Rogers stayed, glaring his little five-year-old heart out, as thought daring Bucky to be a better person. That was the thing about Steve Rogers: he always met the world with an unshakeable heart and dared the world to live up to his expectations.

When the world failed to meet that challenge his faith was rarely shaken, but sometimes (always to Bucky’s amazement) the world got better in response.

“Yeah, whatever,” Bucky replied. Rogers left, but his words, his _dare_ , stuck with Bucky, rattling around in his head, trying to find a place to settle.

It flowered a couple days later, when the old bruises had faded and Bucky was ready to get back into trouble. He was bopping around the neighborhood when he saw the showdown. 

One big kid with the nasty sort of look on his face was snarling down at Stevie, who was in his turn standing between the big kid and a little girl who was actually a little bit taller than Rogers. Stevie already had a black eye and a split lip, but he was glaring up at the bully fiercely, as though he truly believed he could win.

In that moment, Bucky made a choice that would change his life, and it was very simple. He couldn’t very well let a kid like that beat up a shrimp like Rogers. Not when Steve had just wanted to know if he was okay.

He introduced the big kid to his fist (even then, Bucky had a damn fine punch, though he would never knock out Hitler like Steve would) and when he turned back the little girl had already run back to her mama, but Stevie was there looking at him with that smile on his face, lip bleeding and eye swelling up, and looking for all the world as though that alley were a perfect place with just the two of them in it.

From that moment, Bucky was locked in. You can’t exactly let someone fall, not once you have made the choice to save them.

Over a decade of watching Steve’s back and following him into battle, caring about his skinny ass, talking him onto wild rides, sneaking into jazz clubs and teaching him to bop out of a place before the coppers showed up, and always punching Steve’s bullies in the face (sometimes kicking them in the rear, too) only cemented that choice he’d made as a child, a choice that shaped everything he was.

Leaving Steve after getting drafted was one of the worst things he’d ever done. Knowing that he couldn’t be there any more, that his stupid best friend and best guy was going to be back in the States challenging bullies and fighting his own damn lungs every damned day without anyone there to catch him when he fell was almost torture. The torture he experienced at the hands of Zola, parts of himself changing beneath the not-quite-mad doctor’s hands, was almost as bad. Seeing Steve’s face, all grown up and grown out and bigger than him now, not needing him anymore, knowing that he had felt that same kind of pain, screamed in the same way, that hurt, too.

Learning how to follow instead of defend. Learning how to be Rogers’ shadow and not his shield. Understanding that he would still protect Steve to his last breath, in any way he could, even if Steve didn’t really need him any more. Each and every one of these changes a man, and changes him down to his bones. 

The Winter Soldier remembered what it was to defend. That was one of the lies that the Red Room told him, that Zola implanted into his mind. He defined the century. He shaped the world. He’d only been able to believe that those could be good things because he had followed the Captain for all his life.

You can’t erase care. You can’t forget the choice to serve beyond yourself, to give up a life for something that matters more. You can overwrite it and block it out and blur, but in the end that goes into the hardware. The Soldier would have forgotten how to use a gun, how to move, how to fight, easier that he could have forgotten what it meant to fall and know he had failed what he’d been living for.

He’d never been a soldier. That had been Stevie through and through. He’d been a protector who could have been a bully, a right-hand man who’d lost an arm. He didn’t have all his bones anymore, but the one’s he’d kept knew Steve, knew the Captain as more than a threat, more than an enemy.

The Winter Soldier knew Steven Grant Rogers in his bones, like the chill of deep freeze, impossible to overwrite, impossible to shake.

And, knowing Stevie, he had to, at least a little bit, remember being Bucky Barnes.

 


End file.
